16 December 2012

“Hope brings joy”
HOPE … from the prophets … through Jesus … for US
Third Sunday in Advent C
Zephaniah 3:14-20 / Isaiah 12:2-6 /
Philippians 4:4-7 / Luke 3:7-18
23 December 2012


And so we’ve come to the third Sunday in Advent … pink candle Sunday … JOY Sunday … whatever you want to call it.
It’s “Pink Candle Sunday” because the pink Advent candle is the one we light as the third one on the wreath, this third Sunday in Advent. Pink … because … back in the earlier centuries of the church … some hundreds of years ago … there was a clearer connection between the seasons of Advent (preceding Christmas) and Lent (preceding Easter). Advent was seen, like Lent, as a somber time, a season of repentance and preparation, a time of “getting ready” for the Messiah-gift-festival once again.
Over the centuries, we’ve lost some of that sense of Advent as a late fall / early winter Lent, a season of prayerful, careful preparation … though our texts for the first three Sundays in Advent certainly call us there ... with their words of Jesus’ coming again, and John the Baptist’s readying the way ... and the events of the past week, as dark and foreboding as any we’ve experienced recently, most certainly call us back to the prayer and supplications central to our faith ... Kyrie, Eleison ... Lord, Have Mercy upon us.
But ... even in the midst of these dark days of winter ... these dark days of our lives together ... we still have this Pink Candle Sunday before us ... a word, a wisdom, clearer, brighter than the ages ... a word, a light, for us, today.
So how can one have joy in the midst of so much sadness?
We need to make a clear distinction, between joy and happiness.
For they are two different things.
Pastor Gretchen, from Luther’s Table in downtown Renton, asked the question on her Facebook page last Thursday, For you, what is the difference between joy and happiness?
There were many different answers, many deep, well-thought out responses.
Here is mine. I don’t know how well – for you - it meets either of those criteria, but it’s the way I truthfully approached the subject.

Joy is deep, abiding, comforting and hopeful, but not always happy. Happiness is overrated. It can be shallow, cheap, for sale, breakable, addictive, transitory ... terribly American-optimistic and therefore not very realistic (note how our films always have to have a “happy ending” no matter how unbelievable). I’d rather have joy, any day. I’m often not happy (who can be these days ... I take after Luther in that regard) but I am, more often than not, joyful.

There is a difference between joy and happiness, and that’s what I offer you this morning in these words.
All of our texts today are joyful. Yes, all of them.
In some, that joy is not hard to find. It’s right out there, for us.
Isaiah 12, our welcoming litany this morning, is an interjection of joy within chapters of warning, gloom and doom threat, and hopelessness ... as Israel and Judah, the land of God’s promise for his people, careened toward suffering, war, and exile. Certainly life was not happy for Isaiah as he saw what was coming upon his people, for their stubbornness, their faithlessness, their worshipping false gods. And yet, and yet, he could still speak these words of joy ... joy borne from his hope, his unending hope, that his God, and our God, would, will save ...and not make a complete end:

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid,
For the Lord God is my strength and my might, and has become my salvation.
... Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion,
For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

The prophet Zephaniah, too, sings a song of joy for his people.
Most of Zephaniah’s words are, like Isaiah’s, words of judgment for his people ... judgment for their sin, their turning their backs on the ways of God ... particularly, for their worshipping of other, false gods ... but here in the last chapter of this very minor prophet’s words ... there are unmistakable words of joy ... joy which brings hope ... joy with words of HOME.

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!
At that time I will bring you home,
At the time when I gather you ...

JOY. In the midst of unhappiness ... national suffering ... looming tragedy ... still, Zephaniah speaks these words of deep, abiding JOY. It’s not foolish ... ridiculous ... devil-may-care ... though it may have appeared that way then ... and, certainly, even today.
But the prophet can and does speak these great words of JOY because he knows ... knows, in his heart, knows, through the Word of God dwelling, richly, deeply, in his heart ... he knows the JOY of God ... JOY which, in the midst of hopelessness, brings HOPE ... JOY, in the HOPE that this God, his God, their God ... Our God ... cares for and loves us so much that he will bring us HOME ... HOME to the safe, secure, vast, deep, everlasting heart of God, forever.
It is this deep, abiding JOY we have from God which gives HOPE for us to show forth the love of God in our midst ... to show it forth, in the way that God has most clearly, most palpably, shown it to us ... in sharing the Word, of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul shares a word of that “showing forth” in our Philippians reading.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

The way of JOY, the way of sharing forth the JOY which comes to us from God ... is in our showing of gentleness, prayer, supplication with thanksgiving ... in other words ... the cross-shaped, servant way of living that is what being a disciple of Jesus Christ is all about.
Discipleship is a much bantered around word, but what it’s really all about is living as Christ calls us to live ... which is, the way he lived. We can go to all the Bible studies we want ... learn Scripture from rote memory ... say we’re “moral” people ... attend church every Sunday ... but we will not be changed ... and the world will not be changed ... until our hearts and minds are changed ... changed by the Word of God that is Jesus the Christ ... which calls us to fall to our knees in regular, from the heart repentance ... “Lord, have mercy,” ... and rise in the assurance that our sins are forgiven ... and live that cross shaped life into the world ... only then, only then, will real change happen in our hearts, in the hearts of those we encounter, meet, interact with, love.
And this is also where we find good news in our Gospel text.
Certainly the Baptist’s words ... “You brood of vipers!” ... we probably don’t think of them as joyous ... because they are not happy words. But remember, joy and happiness are two distinctly different states of being for us ... one can be joyful without being happy.
John was not happy. He saw a sinful world around him ... a world where the strong oppressed the weak ... where the rich abused the poor ... where armed might was wielded inappropriately to keep people in line for the sake of political gain ... where innocents were regularly slaughtered by whim and fiat. Who could, who can be happy in the face of this?
I can’t. We shouldn’t.
IT IS ALL RIGHT FOR US NOT TO BE HAPPY. TODAY, DURING ADVENT, AT CHRISTMAS, ANY TIME WE SEE THE GARBAGE OF THE WORLD GOING ON AROUND US. IT IS ALL RIGHT FOR US TO LAMENT THE LOSS ... TO SIT IN DUST AND ASHES AND WEEP ... TO BE SILENT BECAUSE FOR THE PAIN OF THIS PRESENT DARKNESS THERE SIMPLY ARE NO WORDS.
But I believe John was JOYFUL. JOYFUL because even in the midst of his lament, he was full of HOPE. HOPE, in the promise of God in the coming of his Son, Jesus the Christ.
Bear fruits worthy of repentance. There is a sentence brimming with hope. Hope through repentance ... turning around, turning to God, giving it up to God in prayer and supplication ... Lord, have mercy ... even in the midst of a time as hopeless as any ... John still had HOPE, HOPE that God would “bring it all home” in the life of Jesus the Christ, come to baptize, come to gather the good fruit, gather the wheat of love and peace and joy and hope into his granary; come to burn up the chaff, the hate and violence and evil and injustice of the world forever ... come to bring us all into our promised HOME, the deep, abiding heart of the love and JOY and HOPE of our God, forever.
Even in his time ... as bad as it was ... as unhappy as it was ... John could, John did, have JOY. JOY THAT WAS BRIMMING WITH HOPE.
Even in our time ... people of God called Nativity, my brothers and sisters ... even in the midst of our unhappiness, suffering and sorrow, loss and lament, we can, we do, still have JOY. Joy ... on this Pink Candle Sunday, this Third Sunday in Advent 2012 ... JOY THAT BRINGS HOPE ... HOPE for us, HOPE for our faith community, HOPE for our families and homes and communities and schools and workplaces, HOPE for our county and state and nation, HOPE for our world.
Because God says so. Because we see so ... through what being part of this faith community ... our bathing in Christ’s promising waters ... our dining at Christ’s welcoming table ... our going forth and serving as Jesus’ hands and feet ... we see the light of Christ piercing the darkness of this world.
JOY that brings us HOPE ... so that we may bring others hope.
May you be that light in someone’s life this week ... this week, the shortest, the darkest of the year ... may the light of Christ in and through YOU bring someone JOY ... JOY that brings HOPE ... and may the world, through that JOY and HOPE, begin to turn ... if even a little ... if even a little ...
Amen.